Quite a remarkable attack on Israel by Paddy Ashdown on the BBC this morning. It all feeds into the BBC meme that Israel has the theoretical right to defend itself but in practise this must not happen. Ashdown was allowed to throw out the faux comparison to what has happened in Northern Ireland – so ignoring the fact that the moment Palestinians got their Judenfrei Gaza they instantly turned it into a terror base. The BBC interviewer also missed the chance to ask Ashdown what is it about the LibDems that so appeals to Israeli haters such as wannabe suicide bomber Jenny Tonge and aspirant Hamas rocketeer David Ward. Still, it’s only Jews they would seek to harm so what’s the big deal….

 Here are some guidelines from Ofcom with regard to what we should expect from the BBC in the way of programme standards:

The BBC is required to observe certain of the programme standards objectives (“the relevant programme standards”) set by Ofcom under section 319 of the Act, namely:

Refraining from the use of techniques which exploit the possibility of conveying a message to viewers or listeners, or of otherwise influencing their minds, without their being aware, or fully aware, of what has occurred.
 

In other words the BBC should not be slipping political, social or cultural messages into its programming in order to influence our thoughts and behaviour.

Such a refrain has obviously had little effect as the BBC deliberately set out to manufacture our opinions on climate change and hence the government’s response should it recognise that ‘public concern’ generated by the BBC’s messaging….all organised by the BBC’s Roger Harrabin and implemented in his infamous seminars in which BBC staff were persuaded to accept the premise that climate change is happening and is man made, and that messages about the dangers of that climate change and the actions necessary to prevent it should be slipped into BBC programming be it comedy, drama, soaps, news or indeed science programmes….not forgetting children’s programmes.

The BBC does not limit such Soviet style practises to climate though, apart from immigration, Islam, Europe and welfare there is the Middle East, Israel/Palestine in particular.

As you read this the BBC is probably reporting that Hamas doesn’t really exist…the Israeli army is remorselessly and savagely bombarding Gaza, taking out hospitals, schools and innocent civilians without cause or reason, reducing Gaza to rubble just because it can, and wants to….but curiously there is nobody shooting at them.  How many times have we heard from the BBC that the Israelis have bombed or shelled something or someone in Gaza killing ‘x’ number of Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials ( who are completely neutral and honest) and only then is it mentioned that the Israelis might have been firing at someone who had fired at them first…allegedly?  It is rare that the BBC mentions Hamas as the instigator of a firefight or that Hamas rockets falling short maybe the cause of death and destruction in Gaza….the default culprit is always Israel.

BBC News is nowadays more a work of dramatic fiction and emotive angst than straight reporting making dramatic programmes like ‘The Honourable Woman’ almost redundant.

The Honourable Woman though has its place in the BBC battle order…..it is a ‘weapon’ of war as much as any gun or bomb…it is a ‘smart bomb’ delivered into thousands, if not millions, of homes around the world bearing not high explosives but a poisonous message….a message delivered by the BBC on behalf of Hamas, Fatah and all those who wish to ‘wipe Israel off the map’.

That explosive message is that Israel, the ‘Jewish state’, should be dismantled and the Palestinians allowed to take the land of Israel….needless to say the BBC glosses over what would happen to the Jews, merely implying that all would be peace and harmony as the love and understanding flowed between the two peoples.

The Honourable Woman of the title is Nessa Stein, the daughter of a ‘Zionist arms dealer’ who has provided the ‘walls’ for Israel’s successful defence….but he was killed by a Palestinian and Nessa and her brother Ephra took over the reins of his company turning it away from the nasty business of arms dealing towards education and infrastructure development for Palestinians…hoping to bring the two sides together eventually.

That is one message…..the father was ‘old Israel’, the well armed defender of the Jewish State’s right to exist…Nessa is the new Israel taking down those ‘walls’ that separate the Jews from the Palestinians…..‘walls’ being the mental attitudes but also  an allusion to the physical security barrier the Israelis had to build to keep suicide bombers and various Palestinian murderers out of Israel….the writer, Hugo Blick, obviously feels he knows better than the Israelis here about the need for security.

In later episodes this theme is expanded on and the BBC can be seen to relish the potential destruction and defeat of Israel and the triumph of the Palestinians as the ‘purity’ of the Jewish state is corrupted and undermined by the influx of Palestinians into the land.

Nessa’s father was killed on the orders of a Fatah commander, the father of the man who raped Nessa when she was kidnapped in Gaza, Nessa giving birth to a son as a result of that rape.
The Fatah commander, naturally representing the various Palestinian ‘resistance’ movements in this allegory, gloried in the ‘poisoning’ of the Stein bloodline with Palestinian blood….

‘The grandson of Eli Stein with my blood in its veins…first I ordered his death and now I take his heritage….how great is his defeat!’

A clear message…the Palestinian militants have fought the Israelis and killed many but the real battle will only be won by destroying the ‘heritage’, the bloodline, of the Jews by flooding Israel with Palestinian people…the ‘right of return‘…in other words destroying the Jewish nature of the Israeli state…the whole reason for its existence….that second phase can only begin when Israel drops its guard, its military defence (represented by the death of the arms dealing father) and more importantly the will to defend itself….this loss of will is represented by Nessa taking over the company with a completely different mindset and attitude and who believes that if only the Jews and the Palestinians could work and live together all would be well…there would be no ‘Israel’ but a one state solution…..a Palestine from the river to the sea…in other words Israel is wiped out.

A nice bit of pro-Palestinian propaganda from the BBC.

Hugo Blick slips in many more little kickers to push the message that Israel is an evil state that needs to be dealt with…….

The Palestinian nanny, Atika, tells us that she is ‘A stranger in her own land….but we learn how to wait’….clearly the thought is that  the tyrannical Israel cannot last forever.

Nessa proclaims Atika is ‘The Wandering Arab’…not once but twice to reinforce the message…this is an allusion to the ’Wandering Jew’, Blick trying desperately to turn the Palestinians into victims of Israeli oppression and tyranny….The Wandering Jew was forced to roam the world homeless and scavenging for a living…..Atika dramatically states ‘It is what the world has made me.’  Not really though…it is what the Palestinian leaders have made her.

When Nessa first meets Atika in the West Bank Blick has them mouth a rather forced exchange, the only reason for it to once again paint Israel as an oppressor when Nessa asks Atika how often she visits her home in Gaza….Atika replies she doesn’t, the borders are closed…Nessa replies… ‘Of course…how stupid of me!’
But….The borders aren’t closed, just restricted…no surprise as the Palestinians are conducting a war against Israel….having said that Atika and Nessa somehow manage to get themselves into Gaza…so clearly ‘closed borders’ are no obstacle.

When Nessa and her brother Ephra, are at a family party the camera lingers on a group of Jewish men who cheer the news on the TV that ‘Israel will not negotiate with terrorists’…..Nessa says to Ephra, who initiated the change from arms dealing to ‘promoting peace and reconciliation’ for his father’s company, that ‘Pappa would be proud of you.’….Ephra looks disdainfully at the cheering Jews and says ‘Yes I think he would have been.’   Clearly a tough stance on defence is not welcome by Ephra/Blick.

Ephra describes the educational faculties provided by his company as being in Israel, East Jerusalem and the West Bank…..Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital…so a sly dig there by Blick.

The Israeli Ambassador is played as if he were a Gestapo officer from the war….very reminiscent of so many WWII films….Just a coincidence I’m sure.

Blick also introduces a device into the programme seemingly just so that he can accuse Israel of being a racist state running an apartheid system.  He creates an unnecessary storyline where Israeli ex-military are given preferential treatment when applying for university courses…to the detriment of Israeli Arabs.
This was, as said, just an excuse to malign Israel by proclaiming it an apartheid state (repeated for reinforcement of effect as with the ‘Wandering Arab’ line) despite being in reality one of the most democratic and open states in the Middle East…and one where Christians can consider themselves safe…not something they could do anywhere else in the Middle East.

The real, central, storyline was that the Israelis had tapped into the Palestinian’s communications by using the cables laid by Nessa’s company….all leading to an Israeli listening post seemingly in a broom cupboard, an unlocked broom cupboard, in the university itself…the entry to which was controlled by an Arab Israeli….top security there then!  Great writing!

The character played by Igal Naor, Shlomo Zahary, was a pantomime Jew, a stereotype set up to be portrayed as shifty, money grabbing and untrustworthy….Blick summarises him as someone ‘who could always smell a deal.’…what does he mean about our stereotypical Jewish pantomime villain?

Blick has a clear message to impart…Israel is a racist, apartheid state that oppresses the Palestinians but will eventually be overwhelmed by a flood of returning Palestinians to ‘their own land’ when Israel’s will to defend itself militarily is broken and the ‘purity’ of the Jewish state is leavened by the demographic reality of that mass of Palestinians making a Jewish state meaningless and impossible.

‘How great would be their defeat?’  

It would seem the BBC is wishing such defeat upon Israel….and it has no shame in broadcasting such a  programme as Israel battles the very forces of terrorism, ethnic cleansing and murder  that the BBC supports and broadcasts on behalf of in both its news bulletins and drama….still three more episodes to go but somehow doubt Israel will turn out to be the ‘good guy’ in all this.

‘Homeland’ was far, far superior.

Two words guaranteed to strike fear into the soul of any thinking person – Marcus Brigstock, that much loved BBC “comedian’. I accidentally caught a portion of his BBC Radio 4 programme “The Brig Society”. It was horrendous – the running “joke” was UKIP are racists. The degree of conformity amongst BBC comedians is incredible – all hive think.

Here you go, an on-time freshly prepared OPEN THREAD to see us all off into the wide blue yonder of the weekend. HERE is where you detail the bias as you see it. A new month commences…

Heeeeeeere’s Jeremy…

PM Netanyahu told BBC that #Israel is in #Gaza to make Israelis safer. Other Israeli PMs said the same. History shows no military solution. — Jeremy Bowen (@BowenBBC) July 20, 2014

History shows that appeasing Hamas does not make Israel safer either but Mr Neutrality misses that. Bowen’s twitter line is astonishingly biased.

I caught Biased BBC favourite Roger Harrabin on the PM programme on BBC Radio 4 late this afternoon. He was telling us that fracking is the road to nowhere but wind power is the future. Nothing changes…..

Apparently the new front runner for the job of BBC Trust Chairman is Nicholas Prettejohn…already a BBC Trustee…and yet another Oxbridge PPE graduate.

The Guardian tells us he is a former ‘city Grandee’ and  advisor to George Osborne….but he is also a former trustee of the Royal Opera House working with the BBC’s DG, Lord Hall, who has already employed a former work mate from the ROH, Anne Bulford, along with several other appointments made without an open recruitment process.

Good that one of Tony Hall’s mates may become the person who would be responsible for regulating the BBC run by Hall.

The BBC…starting to look like the top tier of the Tory party.  The irony.

Seen this?

“A BBC journalist has been scolded by his employer after a tweet he wrote appeared to reference the conspiracy that a Jewish elite are puppet masters, gifted with vast control. Producer Anish Shaikh said: “Attacking David Ward is a strategy to divert focus from real issue #Gaza politicians have no soul as they can be bought & sold by u know who.” He had also been referring to Liberal Democrat David Ward’s tweet,in which the politician said that he would fire rockets to Israel if he lived in Gaza. Mr Shaikh has since deleted his account and has been reminded “of his responsibility to uphold” BBC guidelines, the broadcaster said.

Meanwhile, I am worried that Jeremy Bowen may be going blind..

After leaving Gaza Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati tweeted.

Hamas Spells it Out: Our Aim is the Extermination of the Jews

As the 22nd day of the IDF’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza draws to a close, MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) has published a video in which a Hamas cleric lays out the organization’s “doctrine” in its fight against Israel: genocide.

Speaking in a televised address from Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, the preacher said that Hamas’s aim was to “totally exterminate” the Jews living in Israel, because “wherever the Jews lived they spread corruption”.

H/T  Rob

Hamas defector slams ‘death worship’

Mosab Hassan Yousef, a Hamas defector who worked for 10 years as an informer for the Shin Bet, explained to CNN last week that, for Gaza’s rulers, human life is of no consequence.

“Hamas is not seeking coexistence and compromise; Hamas is seeking conquest,” he added. “The destruction of the state of Israel is not the Hamas final destination.”Hamas, Yousef asserted, wants to build an Islamic state “on the rubble of every other civilization.”

“In the mosques, Hamas told us that without shedding innocent blood for the sake of the ideology we will not be able to build an Islamic state,” he said. “At five-years-old, that is what they were feeding us.”

The correct use of words and phrases is essential when trying to communicate your message accurately and clearly to an audience…Theresa May hopefully recognises this after her disastrous use of the phrase ‘The nasty party’ in reference to the Tories, a phrase that will now haunt the Tories forever more.

The Israelis already know that the media will leap on any nuanced or mangled phrase and use it to propagate their own conspiracy theories.

Jon Donnison has recently done just that in an attempt to discredit the Israeli position that Hamas was responsible for the kidnap and killing of its three teenagers…via Is the BBC biased?:

Israeli police MickeyRosenfeld tells me men who killed 3 Israeli teens def lone cell, hamas affiliated but not operating under leadership1/2
— Jon Donnison (@JonDonnison) July 25, 2014

Israeli police spokes Mickey Rosenfeld also said if kidnapping had been ordered by Hamas leadership, they’d have known about it in advance.
— Jon Donnison (@JonDonnison) July 25, 2014

Donnison’s Tweets had a dramatic effect:

The twittersphere exploded with I-told-you-so’s from pro-Palestinian activists, who claimed Israel had manipulated events surrounding the killing of the teens to prepare for and justify its assault on Gaza, which has since killed more than 1,000 Palestinians

Rosenfeld said that he had told Donnison what the Israeli government had been saying all along. “The kidnapping and murder of the teens was carried out by Hamas terrorists from the Hebron area,” he told The Daily Beast. “The security organizations are continuing to search for the murderers.”

Ironically the BBC’s not so impartial journalist Jon Donnison is now complaining of Israeli ‘spin’ and doing his best to undermine Israel’s PR effort in the face of a pro-Hamas and hostile media…such as the BBC.

Donnison and his anti-Israel cohorts are merely regurgitating very old news….the  Israel Project’s 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY came out in 2009 as might be guessed from the title and was immediately leaked.

Why is Donnison linking to 5 year old news just now…and why is he so concerned with Israeli PR and attempts to discredit it?  Why is he, a BBC journalist, trying to blacken the name and reputation of other journalists?….journalists who may take a more even handed approach to reality.

Donnison would be justified in linking to the document itself if he can show it is in use by Israeli officials…but he offers no proof.  He is certianly not justified in linking to Patrick Cockburn’s article in ‘Counterpunch’ which is itself nothing but spin, anti-Israeli black propaganda.

And which organisation doesn’t have guidelines on how to talk to the Media or the Public?

The BBC itself has extensive ‘spin’ :

The BBC’s Editorial Values

Audiences are at the heart of everything we do.

We are committed to giving them high-quality, original and at times challenging output.  Creativity is the lifeblood of our organisation.

Equally, we must give our audiences content made to the highest editorial and ethical standards.  Their trust depends on it.

We must therefore balance our presumption of freedom of expression with our responsibilities, for example to respect privacy, to be fair, to avoid unjustifiable offence and to provide appropriate protection for our audiences from harm.

This is of course the BBC’s famous guidance on reporting ‘terrorism’:

The relevant Editorial Guideline states:

Use of Language

11.4.5 We must report acts of terror quickly, accurately, fully and responsibly.  Terrorism is a difficult and emotive subject with significant political overtones and care is required in the use of language that carries value judgements.  We try to avoid the use of the term “terrorist” without attribution.  When we do use the term we should strive to do so with consistency in the stories we report across all our services and in a way that does not undermine our reputation for objectivity and accuracy.

The word “terrorist” itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding. We should convey to our audience the full consequences of the act by describing what happened.  We should use words which specifically describe the perpetrator such as “bomber”, “attacker”, “gunman”, “kidnapper”, “insurgent”, and “militant”.  We should not adopt other people’s language as our own; our responsibility is to remain objective and report in ways that enable our audiences to make their own assessments about who is doing what to whom.

11.4.6 For similar reasons, it is also usually inappropriate to use, without attribution, terms such as “liberate”, “court martial” or “execute” in the absence of a clear judicial process.

Perhaps Donnison should give them a read and have a look at his own work before he presumes to lecture others……..

This is what Donnison links to….an article that is clearly designed not to enlighten but to encourage anti-Israeli hate, trying to portray everything the Israelis say as mere spin and lies to cover up war crimes and atrocities….but what war crimes and atrocities?

How Israel Spins War Crimes

by PATRICK COCKBURN

The Israel project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary should be required reading for everybody, especially journalists, interested in any aspect of Israeli policy because of its “dos and don’ts” for Israeli spokesmen.
These are highly illuminating about the gap between what Israeli officials and politicians really believe, and what they say, the latter shaped in minute detail by polling to determine what Americans want to hear.
On every occasion, the presentation of events by Israeli spokesmen is geared to giving Americans and Europeans the impression that Israel wants peace with the Palestinians and is prepared to compromise to achieve this, when all the evidence is that it does not.

This is the Independent’s own spin on the story…..Patrick Cockburn being an Independent journalist…..

The secret report that helps Israel hide facts

The headline is already trying to twist your thoughts by claiming Israel is hiding the facts…but nowhere does it say what facts are being hidden, in fact in a later article Cockburn complains that the Israelis want you to know the facts and not just the ‘message’….

“Don’t confuse messages with facts,” Dr Luntz advises the spokesmen as he explains how facts should be selected and best presented to make Israel’s case.

The Israelis can’t win….Cockburn thinks any ‘message’ such as Israelis having empathy for Palestinians and wanting to live in peace together is a lie……he gives this as an example of such a  ‘lie’:

 “The day will come when Israeli children and Palestinian children will grow up together, play together, and work together side-by-side not just because they have to but because they want to.”

Cockburn however admits if it is spin it doesn’t work……

‘A Gallup poll shows that among Americans aged between 18 and 29 some 51 per cent said Israel’s actions were unjustified while only 23 per cent said they were.’

The Independent is so desperate for this negative narrative about Israeli propaganda to take off that it has Cockburn have another go two days later:

Israel’s propaganda machine is finally starting to misfire

Cockburn says that Israel is making outrageous claims that Hamas welcomes dead civilians:

For all the good advice of Dr Luntz there are signs of Israeli leaders getting rattled. Mr Netanyahu complained on CNN that Hamas wants “to pile up as many civilian dead as they can” and “to use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause.”

Curious though that even BBC journalists admit Hamas exploit dead civilians for propaganda purposes….

Hamas’s military leaders might be calculating that the sight of Palestinian civilians suffering under terrifying aerial bombardment will force the Palestinian Authority to show much greater solidarity and prompt Arab governments to show more support.

Hamas might reason that there were few advantages in keeping the peace whereas once hostilities have started it can demand concessions for agreeing to end them.

Israel might argue that it’s trying to avoid civilian casualties while Hamas is trying to cause them. But television pictures of civilian dead in Gaza – especially children – will help shape perceptions of Israel round the world.

The Independent…Masters of spin themselves….

Thank god we’ve got the honest and impartial BBC to bring us the real truth….oh hell!!!…no!!…they’re busy spreading the Independent’s smears and lies as well……but then who needs the Independent to do the dirty work when you can do your own:

 From Is the BBC biased?:

@HughNaylor @CiFWatch is not a real organization, just a crappy smear campaign run by a couple of dunderheads
— Bekah Wolf (@BekahWolf) July 27, 2014

And who exactly is this Bekah Wolf who doesn’t reckon much to CiF Watch?

Bekah Wolf @BekahWolf Founded @PalestinePSP with my husband Mousa Abu Maria. I live in the U.S. and in Beit Ommar, #Palestine. Have worked in Palestine since 2003